There was a time when Americans looked at Australia and knashed their teeth. While they were trussed up by a virus and a president who didn’t seem to be taking
it all too seriously, we were out and about, enjoying life, with community transmission of COVID-19 sitting on zero.
How the tables have turned.
Now Australia is battling a Delta outbreak and millions of people are in lockdown. Meanwhile, America – having been one of the front-running countries in getting vaccinated – is in a much better place than it was last year.
They are not out of the woods yet though. Which is why the following photo, taken at Lollapalooza 2021 – a music festival in Chicago – caused such a fuss when it was posted to Instagram by @complex.
The image features thousands of revellers packed together. While this shows how far ahead of Australia America is in terms of getting vaccinated, it also showed, in some people’s view, a country perhaps rushing a little to get back to normal.
In any case, further photos from the official event page show the festival was quite the event.
While there were some heartfelt comments left beneath the festival’s photos, showing the beauty of live music being able to return (“I somehow remained composed for the majority of all four days. Then I heard Band of Horses play this live. I still have no idea how many people saw me cry in their photo pit”), there were plenty more comments left beneath Complex’ photo decrying the mass gathering.
“Covid stay undefeated,” one Instagram user wrote.
Another continued the basketball analogy, writing, “covid with a triple-double rn.”
A third commented: “Pfizer about to blow a 3-1 lead.”
Other social media users expressed concerns that this kind of gathering could lead to yet more variants of the virus.
“Deltapalooza ? lord please don’t,” one wrote.
Further comments along these lines included “The line-up: Delta, Gama and Alpha covid strains” and “Delta variant: allow me to reintroduce myself.”
It also sparked discussion over how soon is too soon to return to normal life – and what percentage of the population needs to be fully vaccinated in order to stem the development of new variants.
The US has just hit the 70% Covid vaccine milestone for adults, CNBC reports. Australia currently has fully vaccinated 15.4% of its population.